Message to Kevin, Wayne and Lindsay: sweat the small stuff

Right now ministers will be meeting with senior bureaucrats who have long lists of surplus building measures that the outgoing government had ruled off limits. I hope it’s bold in its response to all this, because it will regret any faintness of heart now at its leisure.

But if it can begin a process by which proposals begin bubbling up from the bottom as well as coming down from the top, if it can sweat the small stuff as well as the big, it will be building an asset of incalculable value for its own longevity. For the dividends will grow over the years, just as they did for Toyota.

Getting a culture that can deliver that within the public service will be far from easy.

But one way to start would be to hold a competition between the central economic agencies - The Departments of Finance, Treasury, PM&C, the Productivity Commission and the Tax Office or perhaps between self selected units within them for the best list of proposals.

I'd invite accounting and consulting firms to participate. As experience gathered I'd encourage entries from all comers out there in the community and at some stage offer prizes for the best suggestions.

Public participation would of course draw forth a rich harvest of cranks, simpletons and the chronically naïve. So sifting the proposals would be a task in itself and there’d be a lot of those “thanks for your views” letters to send.

Somehow I can’t see the public objecting to a government really trying to listen. And I guess Toyota has to discard a lot of dross in customer feedback it gets.

That’s what you do when you’re panning for gold.